Christians need to learn to see and think about the world through the lens of scripture — that is, they need to develop a biblical worldview.
Worldviews are frequently described as the answers to a series of questions. The questions vary, but the ones I mentioned before are useful. Here I will list the questions again and answer them in some detail, but remember that whole books have been written on this topic, so my answers will naturally be limited.
1) What is the nature of God?
First and foremost, God exists. He is eternal, meaning he always existed and always will. He exists independent of the universe, which he created. He can influence the natural world but is not bound by it or the rules that govern it. God is spirit, which is neither matter nor energy. God is neither male nor female but has chosen to use masculine terms to communicate his nature.
2) What is the nature of reality?
The physical world we experience really exists, but that is not the only reality. There are spiritual components to the natural world, too. The world was created by God, is dependent on God, and continues to exist only by his good pleasure. The physical reality we currently experience will not continue indefinitely. Our universe is largely orderly — it obeys regular, consistent physical laws unless told to do otherwise and thus can (usually) be understood. [This is why modern science had to wait on the Judeo-Christian worldview. The ancients observed but were loathe to predict because of the capricious gods they believed in.]
3) What is the nature of human kind?
A lot of the answer to this question can be pulled out of Gen 1:26-17, 2:18, Rom 3:10, 3:23.
We have a interesting picture of man painted in these scriptures. We are made in the image of God; alone of all God’s creatures, we are the image of God. But we are sinful creatures; the image of God is distorted in us because of our sinful nature. We also learned that from the beginning God made us male and female. God designed sexuality; it is not a societal construct but the plan of our creator. And we learned that we are communal creatures – God recognized at the beginning that Adam needed an appropriate companion. We are not meant to live in isolation.
[Notice that we didn’t find all of our verses together. That is why we have to study theology. If we just read the Bible on our own, we’ll come across all of these verses, but putting them all together properly takes a lot of time and effort, and it is best to go outside of ourselves for this – both because we can’t do everything, so we should let the professionals do it, and so that we can check our understanding of the Bible against other people. If we aren’t careful, we can come up with some weird stuff sometimes. We have to check our beliefs against other godly, intelligent people to make sure we haven’t accidentally wandered off into left field somewhere. Even such a great mind as C.S. Lewis had a group of friends he regularly met with to discuss ideas and make sure no one had strayed too far off the reservation.]
4) What happens to a person after death?
"It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment" (Heb 9:27 KJV). I don't quote the KJV often, but sometimes you just can't beat the wording. People live once then face judgement and then the just desserts of their choices.
5) Why is it possible to know anything at all?
Because God made us to know and put us in a world that can be known — one that is, in fact, intended to reveal God to us. For that reason, our senses are (largely) reliable, so we can trust what they tell us about the world around us.
6) How do we know what is right and wrong?
Right and wrong are based on the nature of God. We know them because he has revealed it to us. Some of it is coded into human nature (thank you Adam and Eve), but some of it isn't. Even that part that we seem to know at an instinctual level, though, can be clouded, distorted thanks to the fall. But the fact that some humans think evil things are good doesn't disprove the existence of good and evil any more than than the existence of colorblindness disproves the existence of color.
7) What is the meaning of human history?
Human history is the story of our interaction with God. It is our creation, fall, and redemption. It has meaning only in context of that story.
That's a quick summary of the way Christianity describes the world. Every other religion or system of thought has competing answers to those questions. Some say there is no God or there are many gods or we are all god. Some say the physical world is all that exists; some say the physical world is an illusion. How you think about these things influences the decisions you make in your life, so it is important to start from a solid foundation.
5 comments:
"This is why modern science had to wait on the Judeo-Christian worldview. The ancients observed but were loathe to predict because of the capricious gods they believed in."
I've often read this exact claim in Christian and Creationist forums.
You might be amused to learn that I've heard Muslim religious scholars say almost exactly the same thing but about their own religion. The arguments they make in favour of Islam at least as credible: Most authorities agree that it was the Islamic scholars who first popularised experimental science (as opposed to the natural philosophy of the ancient Greeks and medieval Europeans).
... does that mean that modern science had to wait for the Islamic world-view?
At most you can say that because this entirely man-made project has spanned so many millennia and consequently many cultures have influenced it. No single culture can claim to be responsible for it. Christians have had their role to play, just as Greeks, Arabs, Egyptians and Enlightenment Europeans and modern Americans - to name but a few.
I can see why religious groups might want to take the credit for the enormous success of science which is arguably Mankind's greatest intellectual achievement.
In fairness, the Muslim worldview is, in this respect at least, much like the Christian -- we both believe in an orderly world created by a God of reason. However, their actual record of scientific achievement is spotty because of other aspects of their faith that I don't want to get into here.
Modern science had to wait for someone to say the world follows consistent rules that can be discovered and that we won't be punished for seeking them out. Before that, you could have observation, but you couldn't really have prediction, which is foundational to modern science.
"However, their actual record of scientific achievement is spotty because of other aspects of their faith that I don't want to get into here."
I'd be fascinated to get at least a hint of what you are alluding to here!
Modern science had to wait for someone to say the world follows consistent rules that can be discovered and that we won't be punished for seeking them out. Before that, you could have observation, but you couldn't really have prediction, which is foundational to modern science.
I think it's fair to say that there were Christians who made notable contributions to the history of science, but the notion of an ordered universe that's subject to rational inquiry really does pre-date Christianity by thousands of years.
That "someone" you refer to appears to have been the pre-christian Greek, Babylonian and possibly also Chinese cultures. Those cultures all developed the foundational ideas of observation leading to the formation of what we now called "scientific theories".
The ancient philosophers were making and testing predictions from their theories:
The Geek astronomer Thales was able to predict a solar eclipses in ~500ish BCE. It's possible that the ancient Greeks had been developing these predictive theories for a great deal of time. The Antikythera Mechanism was a clockwork computer that was probably built in the late 2nd century BCE. Most researchers believe that it was able to predict a number of celestial phenomena.
In other words, people in the pre-christian era were definitely forming models about the universe, testing those theories and even building predictive machines.
In short it's simply hogwash to claim that all of this kind of thing began in the Christian era - when we can see that Christian culture never seemed to have much of an interest in scientific endevour until the late middle ages.
it's true that Greek Gods appear to have been a capricious and zany bunch. It looks like then (as now), scientific progress seems to have been more of a secular activity. Perhaps that has always been the case?
I think it's perfectly fine as a Christian to be proud of the contribution that Christians have made to culture (including Science) - why not leave it there instead of inventing an implausible origin story?
""However, their actual record of scientific achievement is spotty because of other aspects of their faith that I don't want to get into here."
I'd be fascinated to get at least a hint of what you are alluding to here!"
Sorry, it's been busy.
In very brief: You know the "Arabic" numerals, and how they're really Indian? A lot of their supposed achievements are like that -- it wasn't them so much as people they'd conquered who made these advancements.
In very brief: You know the "Arabic" numerals, and how they're really Indian? A lot of their supposed achievements are like that -- it wasn't them so much as people they'd conquered who made these advancements.
That's dosen't really count as commentary of early islam, more a declaration that the foundations of mathematics were originally developed by the Hindus without any help from Judeo-Christian values.
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